(sigh) I don’t ask for a lot out of life. One of the small things I look forward to in winter is scooping up the in-shell nuts out of the big bin at the grocery, taking them home, putting them in a wooden bowl with a nutcracker. This year, they have, indeed, been of poor quality. Dried up, and small, to boot. I suppose if I’d had time during the Big Joyous Christmastime Extravaganza, I could have gotten a refund. Not more bad nuts!..Then there’s the apple that’s all brownish inside. Should I really take it back and demand my $.89 ? The squished peach? The flayed pear?
Why did you buy a peach that was squished?
Like sangfroid says, the cleanliness factor is a major part of it. Most stores clean the produce department every 2-4 hours, which is more often than most of us clean our kitchen. (Note: the stockroom areas of most stores are not kept as clean as the front, and sometimes they do have problems with insects.)
Also, we generally have a garbage bin right in the kitchen where spoiled fruit, peels, etc. are tossed, and this really attracts/supports fruit flies. Grocery stores have tried leaving wastebaskets out in the produce area – they are helpful, in that many customers while picking over the produce will toss spoiled ones in them. But then the wastebaskets tend to attract fruit flies. So a problem either way.
Maybe my peach got squished on the way home, or maybe the cashier just flung it in the bag like a baseball, I didn’t PICK OUT a bad piece of fruit. So yes, it’s all my fault. (But the brown-inside apples are not, and the bruised-inside bananas came into the store that way.)
Our store used to have a big waste bin in the produce section. In the summer customers used to strip ears of corn, looking for “good ones” and sometimes stripping all the leaves off altogether so they wouldn’t have to bother doing so at home. Store took away the bins, and also the trash cans they used to have in the parking lot in the cart corrals, probably to save money from people dumping in all kinds of stuff. Who can blame them? (the store, that is.)
I bought a pumpkin once that turned out to be rotten, and I brought it back to exchange. The manager told me that I didn’t have to have brought the rotten one back; they would have trusted me.
Well, time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana.
<ba-dum tishhhh>
I just returned a very expensive and stale bag of chocolate covered almonds and a summer sausage that smelled WAY too much like dog food. I was surprised that the checker bothered to stick his hand in the bag of nasty summer sausage to find the wrapper so he could scan it. I brought the receipt and everything - just give me the money back! Since those 2 unsatisfactory items greatly diminished the charm and allure of my New Year’s Eve cheese plate, I was really hoping for an additional coupon or something, but no dice.
Trader Joe’s is great about this. I don’t even bring the item back or even the receipt, just report it to the manager, especially if I just want a replacement (they have a problem with mold sometimes. Moldy flatbread, moldy yogurt ::barf:: )
Last year I bought a pint of raspberries at Albertson’s for a dessert I was making the next day. I’m a good shopper, and I looked them over through the clear plastic box before putting them in my cart.
The next day I went to open the box and they had all gone grey fuzzed. I fished out the receipt, popped down to the store, told the clerk at customer service what had happened and asked for an exchange. She called the produce manager over. He looked at the fruit, looked at the receipt and said, “I can’t give you an exchange. You bought those yesterday, the day the shipment came in. If these are bad, they’re all bad, and I can’t exchange them in good conscience.”
Instead he gave me a full refund and a pint of blueberries to use as a replacement, since either would work in the recipe.
That’s been my regular store ever since.
When I buy chestnuts (once a year) I buy twice what my recipe calls for, and am lucky to have enough. (Roasted Chestnut and Wild Rice Soup)
I bought some cheese at Giant Eagle and a couple of days later it was all moldy. I took it back and the clerk gave me double my money back. I protested, saying all I wanted was a refund, but she said it was policy. I really didn’t want double my money. Just cheese.